Some conjecture that the Tea Party take down of Eric Cantor may be only the opening salvo of a civil war that may flare within the Republican Party of Virginia ("RPV"). Even as the Commonwealth's population trends toward more diversity and the voting power of the urban areas increase, the Christofascists and their fellows hiding under the Tea Party label are veering more and more into complete crazy land. Some in the RVP - admitted far too few - seem to be slowly realizing that the insanity of the party base may spell the long term death knell of the party. The spittle flecked Christofascists and Tea Party lunatics, who naturally remain detached from objective reality, in contrast claim that more "ideological purity" within the party is what will save it. A piece in the Washington Post looks at the brewing intra-party warfare. Here are highlights:

Virginia Republicans watched and waited to see if the state party’s
treasurer would resign after he publicly questioned Muslims’
contributions to society. Some urged his ouster; others kept quiet. Finally, he agreed to step down.

The
episode added to the turmoil within the state party that is making a
growing number of Republicans uneasy about the GOP’s ability to elect
statewide candidates or deliver Virginia for a Republican presidential
candidate in 2016.

In June, a group of tea party activists, Ron
Paul enthusiasts and staunch conservatives calling themselves the
“conservative coalition” shocked the nation when they helped a
little-known economics professor defeat former House majority leader
Eric Cantor.

The fighting could come to a head Saturday when Republicans from both
camps — insurgents and establishment — gather in Richmond for a meeting
of the party’s governing body, the State Central Committee. The meeting
comes as Democrats hold all five statewide offices and the GOP is
struggling to define itself.

Officially, the committee will
decide some internal issues. But unofficially, some are predicting a
day-long slugfest between warring factions that haven’t faced each other
since Cantor’s loss.

While a meeting full of arcane
parliamentary rules might seem irrelevant to the long-term success of
the party, many Republicans say the decisions of a few dozen powerful
insiders will have a direct impact on the GOP’s likelihood of nominating
candidates with enough mainstream appeal to win statewide elections in a
changing Virginia.

Ron Butler, president of a ­direct-mail firm with ties to Cantor, was
pessimistic that momentum would swing back to the establishment. “They’re
acting more like the Muslim Brotherhood than the Republican Party in
this country,” he said of the conservative wing of the GOP. “They scream
about Eric Holder and President Obama upholding the Constitution.
They’re attempting to throw their own constitution out.”

The
conservative wing tried to blacklist Butler’s firm, an unprecedented
move in Virginia politics that some say runs counter to the party’s
free-market ideals.

With big policy issues facing the state, including Democratic Gov. Terry
McAuliffe’s effort to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and
a worsening state budget shortfall, some Republicans see their internal
troubles as an unhelpful distraction.

The flap about the former party treasurer began July 29, when Bob FitzSimmonds posted an inflammatory comment about Muslims on Facebook. . . . Democrats seized on the FitzSimmonds controversy to cast ­Republicans as
incendiary and noninclusive. The state party specifically called on
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ed Gillespie to denounce the comments,
which the Democrats called “bigoted.”

At the core of the rift is a ideological clash about how candidates are
nominated for elected office. The conservative coalition prefers
party-run conventions that attract the most committed, conservative
activists to day-long gatherings. Moderate Republicans prefer primaries,
which are open to all voters in Virginia.

Last year, conservatives in crucial party leadership positions
successfully pushed for a convention — and went on to nominate
candidates for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general whom
Democrats, on their way to a historic sweep of all three offices,
painted as too conservative.

"Too conservative" is an understatement. Far right extremists - and in the case of Cuccinelli and Jackson, freaking insane - would be more apt.

Even as the Bob and Maureen McDonnell corruption trial (some would describe it as a tawdry circus) grinds on yet another Republican governor has been indicted by a grand jury. This time, it's Texas' Rick Perry - the first Texas governor in nearly 100 years to be indicted on criminal charges. As I've asked before, why does it seem that the majority of such indictments involve Republicans, especially those espousing "family values" and "Christian principles"? Is it a form of arrogance seen among Christofascists that makes these folks see themselves above the law? The New York Times has details on Perry's indictment. Here are excerpts:

A
grand jury indicted Gov. Rick Perry on two felony counts on Friday,
charging that he abused his power last year when he tried to pressure
the district attorney here, a Democrat, to step down by threatening to
cut off state financing to her office.

The
indictment left Mr. Perry, a Republican, the first Texas governor in
nearly 100 years to face criminal charges and presented a major
roadblock to his presidential ambitions at the very time that he had
been showing signs of making a comeback.

Grand
jurors in Travis County charged Mr. Perry with abusing his official
capacity and coercing a public servant, according to Michael McCrum, the
special prosecutor assigned to the case.

The
long-simmering case has centered on Mr. Perry’s veto power as governor.
His critics asserted that he used that power as leverage to try to get
an elected official — Rosemary Lehmberg, the district attorney in Travis
County — to step down after her arrest on a drunken-driving charge last
year. Ms. Lehmberg is Austin’s top prosecutor and oversees a powerful
public corruption unit that investigates state, local and federal
officials; its work led to the 2005 indictment of a former Republican
congressman, Tom DeLay, on charges of violating campaign finance laws.

Mr.
Perry’s detractors said that his moves crossed the line from hardball
politics to criminal acts that violated state laws. His aides denied
that he did anything wrong and said that he acted in accordance with the
veto power granted to every governor under the Texas Constitution. Ms.
Lehmberg did not resign and remains in office.

The
criminal indictment of the state’s chief executive shocked the Texas
political world. Mr. Perry will be arraigned at a later date at the
county criminal courthouse a few blocks from the governor’s mansion.

Mr.
McCrum said it was a matter of procedure that anyone charged with a
felony “will have to be booked in,” including the governor. Asked if Mr.
Perry would have to have a mug shot taken and be fingerprinted, he
added, “I imagine that’s included in that.”

The
charge of abuse of official capacity carries a prison sentence of five
to 99 years, and the charge of coercion of a public servant a two- to
10-year prison sentence.

The indictment could mar the legacy of Mr. Perry, the longest-serving governor in Texas history, as his tenure nears an end.

According
to the state comptroller’s website, the governor’s office has paid his
lawyer, Mr. Botsford, nearly $80,000 since June. Legal experts said that
other state officials who have been accused of crimes relating to their
duties have had to pay for their own defense, and this was one of the
first times Texas taxpayers were paying the bill.

The last Texas governor to face criminal charges was James E. “Pa”
Ferguson, who was indicted in 1917 by a Travis County grand jury on
embezzlement and eight other charges. His case also involved a veto that
stirred anger: Mr. Ferguson vetoed the entire appropriation to the
University of Texas because it had refused to fire certain faculty
members. The state Senate voted to impeach him, but he resigned first.

Personally, I hope Perry is convicted - along with Bob and Maureen McDonnell. In both cases, it would be a strike against the GOP's sick version of "family values."

Even as Mat Staver is ranting against gays and the GOP, a new poll suggest why Republicans are remaining more and more silent on the issues of gay rights in general and gay marriage in particular: the majority of Americans now support gay marriage and a plurality say they would not be upset to learn their child is gay. In short, preaching an anti-gay message is increasingly political poison unless one is address a gathering of Christofascists behind closed doors (as GOP Senate candidate Ed Gillespie is want to do). Like it or not, the Christofascists and politicians still willing to prostitute themselves to them are steadily losing the war against gays and one can only hope that soon they will be treat akin to segregationists and KKK members in decent circles. A piece from McClatchy Washington Bureau looks at the rapid sea change in views:

Americans are changing their minds about gays at a startling pace,
driven by young people coming of age in a new era and by people of all
ages increasingly familiar with gays and lesbians in their families and
their lives, according to a new McClatchy-Marist Poll.

A solid
majority support same-sex marriage, confirming the fast-turning tide
that’s started appearing over the last three years. A majority say they
wouldn’t be upset or very upset if a child were gay, up dramatically
from a generation ago. And an overwhelming majority say it would make no
difference to them if a candidate for Congress were gay, up sharply.

The
sea change in attitudes is being propelled by two major forces, the
poll found. First, people aged 18-29 overwhelmingly favor same-sex
marriage. Second, the ranks of Americans who say they know someone who’s
gay has skyrocketed over the last decade and a half. And those who know
someone who’s gay are almost twice as likely to support same-sex
marriage, the survey found.

There are still opponents. Republicans oppose same-sex marriage by
better than 2-1. Tea party supporters oppose it by nearly 3-1. Those 60
and older are on the cusp, with 50 percent opposed.

While gays and lesbians have pushed for decades for equal rights,
public opinion has changed only in the last few years and now is
changing rapidly.

Adults now support same-sex marriage by 54-38
percent. For more than a decade, only about a third of Americans
supported the idea, ranging from 27 percent in 1996, as measured by the
Pew Research Center, to 35 percent in 2009. Support has increased
steadily since then, however. In 2011, a plurality supported same-sex
marriage for the first time. And in 2013, a majority of adults said for
the first time that they favored it.

By 71-27 percent, American adults say they know someone who’s gay.
That’s a dramatic change from a generation ago, when a 1999 Pew poll
found that Americans said by 60-39 percent that they didn’t know anyone
who was gay.

Nearly half – 48 percent – said they wouldn’t be upset if one of
their children told them they were gay, and 14 percent said they
wouldn’t be very upset. Thirty-five percent said they’d be somewhat
upset or very upset. It was the opposite three decades ago.

Eighty-three percent of adults said that whether someone was gay
wouldn’t make a difference in whether they voted for that candidate. In
December 1985, just 49 percent said it would make no difference, while
47 percent said they’d be less likely to vote for a candidate who was
gay, according to the Los Angeles Times survey.

As Chief Justice Roberts considers staying the 4th Circuit's ruling striking down Virginia's gay marriage bans, one can only hope that he's read this data and realizes that actions against gay marriage will only further stigmatize Republicans and further discredit justices who support religious based bigotry. Antonin Scalia may not care how history views, but perhaps Roberts does.

Virginia is curse by having the distinction of two "universities" that are run by crackpot nutcases and hate merchants: Regent University in Virginia Beach and Liberty University in Lynchburg. While the increasingly insane Pat Robertson continues to embarrass the region with his batshit crazy/hate filled comments, he seemingly leaves the operation of Regent's law school alone. The same cannot be said for Liberty's law school where Mat Staver continues to make remarks and push policies that ought to make the American Bar Association revisit the law school's accreditation - the loss of which would make it impossible for Liberty graduates to tax the bar exam in most states (something that would great benefit the legal profession). Staver's latest dose of hate marketing is noted by the Washington Post. Staver is ranting that the GOP's failure to loudly oppose gay marriage is akin to silence in Germany in the 1930's as the Nazi regime rose to power. If the statement isn't insane enough by itself, the real irony is that Staver wants a Christian theocracy where those who do not subscribe to his hate and fear based religion would suffer like those who opposed the Nazis. Here are highlights from the Post piece:

Mathew Staver, the dean of the ABA-accredited Liberty University
School of Law in Virginia, is upset that Republicans aren’t saying and
doing more to stop same-sex marriage. In an interview on a Christian radio program, he offered this observation:

I
think from the political right, the Republicans and so forth, those
that are Republican elected officials state and federal, those who
remain silent will ultimately be held accountable just as much as
Democrats who advocate to the contrary. This is not an issue in which
you can remain silent any more than you can remain silent during Nazi
Germany. That was a moral issue, it was not defined by geography, there
was a moral imperative there of the dignity of the human being, you
can’t remain silent there and expect no consequences. Nor can you remain
silent or advocate to the contrary with regards to the undermining of
marriage as a union of a man and a woman.

The Supreme Court is currently considering whether to stay the Fourth
Circuit’s decision to strike down Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage.

Once again we see a minister from a far right fundamentalist denomination going to jail for sex offenses against minors. I'm not saying that "liberal" denominations don't have some bad apples, but it seems that a disproportionate number of the sexual predators in ministry come from conservative denominations that are utterly obsessed with policing people's sex lives. A case in point: Troy A. Mitten, a youth minister at Trinity Assembly of God in Chesterfield County, Virginia. The Richmond Times Dispatch has the tawdry and all too common details (note how he preyed on the most vulnerable - just like many a Catholic priest - and Southern Baptist pastor):

As a talented and engaging youth minister for
Trinity Assembly of God in Chesterfield County, Troy A. Mitten had a
gift when it came to nurturing the spiritual and emotional needs of the
church’s young set.

“The congregation loved and
respected him,” said the Rev. Quarles Lowell, the former lead pastor of
the defunct church that met at 233 N. Courthouse Road.

But
unbeknownst to many, Mitten had a salacious side that a prosecutor
described as “not overtly sexual.” He used his exceptional skills as a
youth leader and mentor to subtly prey on at least three of the church’s
young teenage girls in the 1990s.

Nearly two decades later,
Mitten, 53, on Thursday was sentenced to 10 years in prison with seven
suspended for taking indecent liberties with two teenage parishioners
beginning when they were 14.

In
sentencing Mitten, Judge Frederick G. Rockwell III said the pastor used
the power of his position to sexually exploit the girls. And he could
not escape punishment despite all his positive ministerial work.

Both victims, now 32 and 35,
testified about their yearslong ordeal and how the man they once loved
as a father figure and spiritual counselor had betrayed them. The sexual
contact began after Mitten gained their trust and affection.

One of the women bluntly described Mitten as a “patient predator.”

“He patiently waited for me to trust him” before initiating sexual contact, she said. The
other victim, who was similarly groomed for a sexual relationship,
said, “I wanted a dad, I wanted to be loved, and I wanted a family.”

The attention, however, eventually progressed to rubbing and touching,
which the girls initially discounted. Mitten began talking to them about
sex and sexuality as they grew older, and that developed into
inappropriate touching and various sex acts in a Wendy’s parking lot and
on bike rides into the woods.

With demographic changes in Virginia continuing to trend strongly against the Virginia GOP's long term status as a major political party outside of rural backwaters and select white neighborhoods, rather than shift its extremist agenda to remain competitive, the Virginia GOP continues its war to disenfranchise as many voters it deems hostile to its extreme policies. The main targets are minority voters, of course since nowadays most good Virginia Republicans might just as well be card carrying members of the KKK, and young voters and the elderly. All of these efforts are being taken under the guise of preventing voter fraud even though there is zero evidence that voter fraud exists. The truth is that it is all about keeping those who don't subscribe to the GOP's steal from the poor to give to the rich and religiously extreme agenda from voting if at all possible. A main editorial in the Washington Post looks at the continuing GOP effort to disenfranchise voters. Here are highlights:

IN 2012, Republican lawmakers in Virginia changed a decade-old state law that allowed registered voters without identification
to cast ballots if they signed a sworn statement attesting to their
identity. Mindful that there was no compelling reason for the change —
there was zero evidence of in-person voting fraud — they cushioned its
impact by allowing voters to present any one of an array of IDs,
including bank statements and utility bills. They also authorized a $2.2 million public relations campaign to make sure voters got the word.

Then GOP lawmakers went for broke. In what amounts to an unadvertised blitzkrieg aimed at young and minority voters, they enacted another law,
effective this year, requiring voters to present photo IDs at the polls
— and not just any photo IDs. Even if they have registered without a
hitch, Virginians may now be blocked from casting regular ballots if
their photo ID expired more than a year ago, if they moved to the state
recently and have only an out-of-state driver’s license, if all they
have is a photo ID from a private high school, if they attend college
out of state and present a photo ID from that institution, or . . . .The point is clear. At least 200,000 active voters in Virginia
lack driver’s licenses, and many of them may also lack other photo IDs
that the state now may consider valid for the purpose of voting. If the
Republicans’ goal was to disenfranchise those voters, they have done a
fine job.

Putting aside their partisan agenda — to impede voting
by certain groups that lean Democrat — the illogic of their project is
breathtaking. Bank and utility statements, paychecks and other non-photo
forms of ID remain sufficient to register to vote and to receive voter
registration cards in Virginia. But those same forms of identification
no longer will suffice at polling stations; nor will voter registration
cards (which have no photo).

Republican lawmakers note that registrars’ offices will issue voters a
free photo ID. But many voters who work full-time would have trouble
finding the time or means to get to these offices, which are closed
weekends and evenings.

The campaign to tighten voter ID rules
has accelerated for several years under GOP auspices, mainly in Southern
states. It calls attention to the party’s increasing identification
with and reliance on older and whiter portions of the nation’s
electorate, which are shrinking. By trying to negate the electoral
effects of demographic change, Republicans are digging themselves deeper
into a hole of their own making.

The images coming out of Ferguson, Missouri are certainly providing fodder for America's enemies that engage in human rights abuses. Not only was a unarmed 18 man killed inexplicably by police, but the actions of the police to protesters look like something out of a police state. Those who chant about American exceptionalism need to take a good hard look at what is happening here in their own back yards. Of course most of those who engage in that form of xenophobia tend to be conservatives/Republicans who nowadays are thinly veiled white supremacists, so seemingly the murder of unarmed young men isn't an issue so long as the victims are black. Tellingly, among those roughed up by police are news reporters, some of who had their camera equipment seized - a sign to me that even the police know that their conduct is improper and that they fear images being disseminated by the media. A piece in the New York Times and another in the New Yorker look at the frightening militarization of the police in America. First excerpts from the Times:

For
four nights in a row, they streamed onto West Florissant Avenue wearing
camouflage, black helmets and vests with “POLICE” stamped on the back.
They carried objects that doubled as warnings: assault rifles and
ammunition, slender black nightsticks and gas masks.

They
were not just one police force but many, hailing from communities
throughout north St. Louis County and loosely coordinated by the county
police.

Their
adversaries were a ragtag group of mostly unarmed neighborhood
residents, hundreds of African-Americans whose pent-up fury at the
police had sent them pouring onto streets and sidewalks in Ferguson,
demanding justice for Michael Brown, the 18-year-old who was fatally
shot by a police officer on Saturday.

When
the protesters refused to retreat from the streets, threw firebombs or
walked too close to a police officer, the response was swift and
unrelenting: tear gas and rubber bullets.

To the rest of the world, the images of explosions, billowing tear gas
and armored vehicles made this city look as if it belonged in a
chaos-stricken corner of Eastern Europe, not the heart of the American
Midwest. As a result, a broad call came from across the political
spectrum for America’s police forces to be demilitarized, and Gov. Jay
Nixon installed a new overall commander in Ferguson.

“At
a time when we must seek to rebuild trust between law enforcement and
the local community,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said, “I am
deeply concerned that the deployment of military equipment and vehicles
sends a conflicting message.”

But
such opposition amounts to a sharp change in tone in Washington, where
the federal government has spent more than a decade paying for body
armor, mine-resistant trucks and other military gear, all while putting
few restrictions on its use.

The
increase in military-style equipment has coincided with a significant
rise in the number of police SWAT teams, which are increasingly being
used for routine duties such as conducting liquor inspections and
serving warrants.

For
years, much of the equipment has gone unnoticed. But as the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan have drawn down, police departments have been
receiving 30-ton, mine-resistant trucks from the military. That has
caught the attention of the public and caused controversy in several
towns.

Nowhere has the deployment of military-style equipment been on starker display than this week in Ferguson.

Yes, it is a frightening development. The New Yorker piece provides some eye witness accounts:

Nothing that happened in Ferguson, Missouri, on the fourth night since
Michael Brown died at the hands of a police officer there, dispelled the
notion that this is a place where law enforcement is capable of gross
overreaction. Just after sundown on Wednesday, local and state officers
filled West Florissant Avenue, the main thoroughfare, with massive
clouds of tear gas. They lobbed flash grenades at protesters who were
gathered there to demand answers, and, at times, just propelled them
down the street. That they ordered the crowd to disperse was not
noteworthy. That the order was followed by successive waves of gas,
hours after the protests ended, became an object lesson in the issues
that brought people into the streets in the first place.

Two
journalists, Wesley Lowery, of the Washington Post, and Ryan Reilly,
of the Huffington Post, and a St. Louis Alderman, Antonio French, were
arrested. (The journalists were let go without charges; the alderman, as his wife told reporters,
was released after being charged with unlawful assembly.) What
transpired in the streets appeared to be a kind of municipal version of
shock and awe; the first wave of flash grenades and tear gas had played
as a prelude to the appearance of an unusually large armored vehicle,
carrying a military-style rifle mounted on a tripod. The message of all
of this was something beyond the mere maintenance of law and order: it’s
difficult to imagine how armored officers with what looked like a
mobile military sniper’s nest could quell the anxieties of a community
outraged by allegations regarding the excessive use of force. It
revealed itself as a raw matter of public intimidation.

Inside of a week, two black teen-agers have been shot by police and,
in both instances, the bureaucratic default setting has favored law
enforcement, fuelling a perception that the department is either inept
or beholden to a certain nonchalance about the possibility of police
brutality. I watched the events that led up to the eruption of
tear gas with Etefia Umana, an activist who is chairman of the board of
an organization called Better Family Life, and who lives about fifteen
hundred feet from the spot where Brown was shot. Umana explained to me
that the durable anger in Ferguson is fueled by the enigma of the
officer’s identity and the perceived possibility that, should the
department fail to bring charges against him, his name may never be
known.

The day began with questions about why a young man was killed just days
before he was due to begin college. It ended as a referendum on the
militarization of American police forces.

While not yet officially designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ludicrously named Alliance Defending Freedom - which claims it fights fro religious freedom but in reality works to force Christofascist beliefs on all Americans - has filed an Application for a Stay of Mandate with the U.S. Supreme Court in Bostic v. Rainey, et al., after the United States Court of Appeal for the fourth Circuit refused to stay its ruling that Virginia's bans on same sex marriage are unconstitutional under the U. S. Constitution. ADF is representing nasty bigot Prince William County Circuit Court Clerk, Michele McQuigg who wants to keep LGBT Virginians inferior under the law because we do not subscribe to her hate and fear based religious beliefs. The good news is that ADF has a profound track record of losing cases. The bad news is that many speculate that the Supreme Court will grant a stay pending an appeal from the 4th Circuit. The full application can be seen here. Here are further details from the Washington Blade:

The court clerk defending Virginia’s
ban on same-sex marriage filed a petition on Thursday with the U.S. Supreme
Court calling on justices to block a lower court decision allowing gay couples
to wed in the Old Dominion starting next week.

“Unless this Court issues the stay
requested here and makes clear that the courts of appeals should stay their
mandates in these cases, it is likely that other circuits will mistakenly
follow the Fourth Circuit’s lead,” the brief states. “Yet that would invite needless
chaos and uncertainty rather than facilitate the orderly and dignified
resolution of a constitutional question of enormous national importance.”

The brief, signed by Alliance
Defending Freedom senior counsel Byron Babione, argues the Supreme Court should
grant a stay because justices are likely to consider take up a same-sex
marriage case on appeal with a fair prospect of reversing lower court decisions
overturning bans on gay nuptials.

Unless the Supreme Court intervenes,
same-sex couples could start obtaining marriage licenses from clerks’ offices
in Virginia after the Fourth Circuit issues the mandate on its decision, which
is set to occur 8 am on August 21.

The petition from Alliance Defending
Freedom was delivered to Chief Justice John Roberts, who’s responsible for stay
requests for the Fourth Circuit. Roberts can decide the matter on his own, or
refer the request to the entire court.

It remains to be seen what action
the Supreme Court will take, but justices have previously granted stays on
similar decisions in favor of marriage equality.

Shannon Minter, legal director for
the National Center for Lesbian Rights, nonetheless said he sees room for the
Supreme Court to deny a stay this time around in the Virginia case.

“A lot has changed since the Court
issued a stay in Kitchen, which was the first district court decision in the
entire country striking down a state marriage ban after Windsor,” Minter said.
“There are now many other such decisions, in every corner of the nation. The
Court could decide that a stay is no longer warranted.”

In the event the Supreme Court
declines to issue a stay, the Virginia decision would become binding precedent
in the Fourth Circuit. Minter said whether clerks in other Fourth Circuit
states — West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina — would then have the
authority to distribute marriage licenses to same-sex couples “would depend on
the specifics of state law.”

“But whether immediately or with
some short delay to get implementing orders, I expect that marriages would
commence in those states very quickly,” Minter said.

Despite the claims of the Christofascists that America is a "Christian nation" and that they represent a majority of Americans, the reality is that religiosity has declined sharply and currently is at the lowest level ever measured. For those of us who long for the day when Christofascists are political and social outcast, the obvious hope is that religion's decline continue and/or accelerate. Here are some highlights from Religion News Service:

Religiosity in the United States is
in the midst of what might be called ‘The Great Decline.’ Previous declines in
religion pale in comparison. Over the past fifteen years, the drop in
religiosity has been twice as great as the decline of the 1960s and 1970s.

Last year brought a continuation of
this decline. 2013 was a new low for the level of religiosity in the country.

How do we track this massive change
in American religion? We start with information from rigorous, scientific
surveys on worship service attendance, membership in congregations, prayer, and
feelings toward religion. We then use a computer algorithm to track over 400
survey results over the past 60 years. The result is one measure that
charts changes to religiosity through the years.

The graph of this index tells the
story of the rise and fall of religious activity. During the post-war,
baby-booming 1950s, there was a revival of religion. Indeed, some at the
time considered it a third great awakening. Then came the societal changes of the
1960s, which included a questioning of religious institutions. The
resulting decline in religion stopped by the end of the 1970s, when religiosity
remained steady. Over the past fifteen years, however, religion has once
again declined.

But this decline is much sharper than the decline of 1960s and
1970s. Church attendance and prayer is less frequent. The number of people with
no religion is growing. Fewer people say that religion is an important part of
their lives.

In 2013, we saw continued declines
in religiosity. The importance of religion in people’s lives? Down. Church
attendance? Down. People who say they are “no religion”? Up. The result: 2013
had the lowest level of religiosity of any year we can measure.

Bob Felton at Civil Commotion suggest some of the causes for religion's decline which seem on target:

There are doubtless many things at work here; certainly, education has
played a role. No less important though, I am sure, is the relentlessly
vile behavior of His publicists [i.e., the "godly Christian crowd]. Stressed, marginalized, ridiculed —
the Pious are showing their true colors, and it ain’t pretty.

Throughout the days of the Third Reich, Adolph Hitler and his henchmen disseminated propaganda that was totally unrelated to reality. In the early days, the propaganda involved claims of protecting ethnic Germans outside of Germany - even though the real intention was one of conquest - and in the waning days the propaganda claimed that there were German victories even as the allied forces closed in on Berlin from all sides. Amazingly, Hitler after a while seemed to believe his own propaganda even though it consisted of obvious lies to sane individuals both inside and outside of Germany. Today, we see amazing parallels as Vladimir Putin claims that Russia is sending "humanitarian aid" to eastern Ukraine even though this alleged humanitarian aid includes helicopters, surface-to-air missile systems, and possible anti-aircraft weapons systems. So the question is: is Putin a bald face liar or is he so insane that he believes his own lies and thinks everyone else is equally insane. Here are highlights from Business Insider:

According to The Interpreter, this weapon [see image above] is possibly a 9K22 Tunguska battery,
which had been mounted onto a Kamaz truck. Tunguskas are anti-aircraft
weapons that can fire both missiles and 30mm guns. They are capable of
shooting down low-altitude aircraft, although the gun can also be used
against ground troops.

The Tunguska probably isn't the only anti-aircraft weapon traveling with the convoy . . . . Russian military helicopters have been flying alongside the convoy as well.

The Russian convoy has raised a number of red flags, even aside from
this heavy contingent of guns and armor. The convoy has failed to abide
by conditions put in place by both Ukraine and the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) — the convoy is traveling under the
ICRC flag, yet the organization has not been able to verify the contents
of the trucks.

"At the moment it is not an International Red Cross convoy,
inasmuch as we haven't had sight of the material, we haven't had certain
information regarding the content, and the volume of aid that it
contains," ICRC spokesman Ewan Watson told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

The convoy has also veered away from an agreed-upon border crossing
under the control of the Ukrainian government, and is instead traveling toward rebel-held eastern Ukraine.

According to The Interpreter,
the convoy is close to the same border crossing that the Russians are
believed to have used to transport the Buk missile system that was used
to shoot down MH17 in July.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned on
Monday that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was a "high probability" and
that it would take place under the "guise of a humanitarian operation."

Russia, which sees
Russian-speakers in the east under threat from a government it considers
chauvinistic, said any suggestion of a link between the convoy and an
invasion plan was absurd.

Beyond the military supplies tailing the convoy, Russia still has an
estimated 20,000 troops along its border with eastern Ukraine. In total,
Russia may have upward of 45,000 soldiers encircling Ukraine, if Russian soldiers in Crimea and Belarus are taken into account.

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Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

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